Former prosecutor, former Kezer attorney take on defense of Lamb in Lawless murder case

Russ Oliver, the former Stoddard County prosecutor, and Charles Weiss, an attorney who represented Josh Kezer during his exoneration trial, will represent Leon Lamb in his defense in the 32-year-old murder case of Mischelle Lawless of Benton.

Oliver is an attorney based in Dexter. He was the elected prosecutor of Stoddard County for 12 years, before losing the election in 2022. He now runs his own firm.

Oliver has prosecuted and represented defendants in murder cases, having won on both sides.

Weiss, in addition to a 40-year career as a lawyer with the Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner law firm, has been involved in multiple murder exoneration trials in the area, including Josh Kezer, David Robinson and Donald Nash.

Nash’s conviction of the murder of his girlfriend, Judy Spencer in Salem, centered on DNA found under the victim’s fingernails. In addition to showing that DNA found under the nails of a victim would not conclude guilt, Nash’s legal team also showed new evidence linking fingerprints to another person. Further analysis of the murder weapon — a pair of shoe strings — did not have Nash's DNA. Nash’s team claimed investigators in the case “recklessly failed to investigate other suspects."

Weiss’ experience is in civil law, not criminal law, but he’s intimately familiar with the Lawless murder, having already deposed several witnesses and suspects connected to the case. Exoneration cases are civil legal matters.

Lamb was indicted by a grand jury in December for the murder of Lawless, who was Lamb’s ex-girlfriend.

Lawless was a nursing student at Southeast Missouri State University and a waitress at Shoney’s in Sikeston. The 19-year-old Kelly High School graduate lived about a half mile from the Interstate 55 exit ramp where she was found — shot three times — inside her car Nov. 8, 1992.

Her body was found in the car, but the crime appears to have started down an embankment, where a blood trail began. It’s believed that’s when she sustained a gash on her head.

Lamb has been held in Faulkner County jail in Arkansas since Dec. 20.

A spokeswoman from Gov. Mike Kehoe’s office on Friday afternoon, Jan. 24, stated in an email to the Southeast Missourian that Kehoe had issued a governor’s warrant to Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders for the requisition of Lamb. The spokeswoman did not respond to follow-up questions. It is unclear where Lamb will be taken when he is released from Arkansas custody.

In 1994, Josh Kezer was convicted of Lawless’ murder, based on the false testimony of jailhouse informants and false identification by a witness, long believed to be a suspect in the case. Kezer was exonerated in 2009 on an actual innocence ruling, meaning he proved his innocence. Several witnesses testified that Kezer was in Kankakee, Illinois, the evening of the murder, and could not have been at the Benton exit on Interstate 55. No physical evidence ever tied Kezer to the crime scene.

Several people testified under oath as part of Kezer’s exoneration, or to investigators, that Mark Abbott confessed to the crime. One witness stated he met Abbott at a fishing cabin where Abbott told him he “took care of the bitch” when the witness brought up the Lawless murder. Abbott told former Cape Girardeau narcotics police officer Bill Bohnert that he witnessed Kevin Williams shoot Lawless, according to statements and sworn testimony from Bohnert. Williams told a separate witness that he was at the scene when Abbott shot and killed Lawless, according to sworn testimony. Two other witnesses told the court that Williams indicated to them that Abbott killed Lawless. Crime reconstructionists and DNA evidence have shown that Abbott was not truthful regarding how he interacted with the body on the night of the murder, according to former Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter, who reopened the case and has investigated the murder for more than a decade. Abbott reported finding Lawless shot and killed to the sheriff’s office on the night of the murder.

Both Abbott and Williams were convicted in a federal drug conspiracy case in the mid-1990s, which some law enforcement officers at the time described as the largest methamphetamine bust in the history of the region. That investigation began in October 1994, about four months after Kezer was convicted. Abbott and Williams were the subject of a previous grand jury investigation in 2017 regarding the Lawless murder that did not result in an indictment.

The new investigation has charged Lamb, whose DNA was found under Lawless’ fingernails. Lamb, a black belt who trained in martial arts with Lawless, has stated several times to police that Lawless came to his home the night of the murder, and they had sex before she left for her home. Lamb passed a polygraph in the days following the murder, according to investigative files. Lamb was questioned multiple times in separate investigations over the years. No investigative report has described any officer seeing defensive wounds on Lamb. The sheriff, Bill Ferrell, and lead investigator, Brenda Schiwitz, did not collect clothing from Lamb or require a gunshot residue test the night of the murder.

Diary entries describe Lawless’ relationship with Lamb as a rocky one. The couple had dated for more than two years, but split up the summer before Lawless was murdered. The diary revealed that they had reconnected several times after the breakup. Friends of Lawless and Lamb described Lamb as wanting space and distance from his ex-girlfriend, which is confirmed by diary entries, but Lawless kept hoping he would change his mind. The diary also described some angry outbursts by Lamb, in which he scared her. There were no such entries in the recent days before her murder.

Witnesses saw Lawless interact with Lamb the night of the murder, suggesting what could have been an argument at Lamb’s car. No witness could articulate what the discussion at his car entailed. One witness described Lamb as squealing his tires out of the parking lot when he left. Lawless spent most of the night of the murder cruising with her best friend, Lelicia O’Dell, as well as friends Eric Shanks and Vince Howard in Sikeston. Shanks is currently employed by the sheriff's office.

Lawless was also seeing a man named Lyle Day. Less than a week before the murder, Lawless and Day had a fight, witnessed by others, in which she jumped out of his truck and walked several blocks to the tanning salon where she had parked. Day told police the argument was over a claim by Lawless that she was pregnant by him, and she was upset that he wanted her to get an abortion. An autopsy showed Lawless was not pregnant. Day has said he was at a party and with a friend returning a car to his friend's sister at the time of the murder.

It’s unclear what new evidence has been discovered by investigator David James, a retired detective from Cape Girardeau County. James — who led an investigation that resulted in the high-profile conviction of Clay Waller for the June 2011 murder of his wife, Jacque — was hired by Allen Moss, a special prosecutor appointed by a judge at the request of current Scott County Prosecuting Attorney Don Cobb. James was commissioned by the Scott County Sheriff’s Office during the course of the investigation.

Moss has a long career in the criminal justice space, having served for a short time as an assistant prosecutor under former Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle. Moss was also an assistant attorney general and municipal judge for Scott City for more than 20 years.

Moss and Scott County Prosecuting Attorney Don Cobb are friends and former law partners.

Moss’ website still promotes his criminal defense services, though he is ineligible to serve in that role as long as he is serving as a special prosecutor for the state of Missouri.

As it stands, the case will pit a longtime former prosecutor as a defense attorney against a former longtime defense attorney serving as a prosecutor.

Moss has a small previous connection to the case. He represented the late Bobby Wooten, a former Scott City police officer, during Wooten’s deposition in Kezer’s exoneration hearing. In that hearing, Wooten testified that Abbott had come to him days after the murder to say that he saw a man named Ray Ring — a friend of Lyle Day — in a car at a payphone near the crime scene the night of the murder. The report was not disclosed to the defense, and was one of several pillars that determined that Kezer’s constitutional rights were violated. Months after Abbott identified Ring, a mixed-race man, as the person he saw in the car, he changed course and said it was Kezer in the car. In the exoneration hearing, Moss had his client, Wooten, clarify for the record that Wooten remembered Mark Abbott making the report. Wooten had originally cast doubt on whether the signature on the report was his.

Moss told KFVS12 on Nov. 7, 2023, that “We aren’t part of any faction down in Scott County. I live in Cape County. David worked in Cape County for the sheriff’s office. So we are completely independent.”

Cape Girardeau County was involved in the initial investigation of Kezer. The original jailhouse informants, who gave false testimony, were inmates at the Cape Girardeau County jail and received leniency on their cases that was approved by Swingle. Two of the four informants recanted their statements before the case went to trial. One of the informants eventually testified for the defense that the four of them manufactured the story. Another stuck to his story and accused Kezer’s attorney of threatening him.

No hearings are scheduled for Lamb. It's unclear when he will be moved to a Missouri jail. He is currently being held without bond. Judge Robert Zachary Horack is listed as the assigned judge.